12 Enjoyable Names for Relatively Common Things

Fancy yourself a logophile ... and didn't have to look up "logophile"? See if you know these 12 words for common things.

1. The plastic table-like item found in pizza boxes is called a box tent and was patented in 1983. Most people in the biz now call it a pizza saver.

2. Ever look at a familiar word for so long that it
starts to look—and sound—completely strange? That feeling of seeing
something for the first time, even though there's nothing new about it,
is called jamais vu.

3.Paresthesia is that tingling sensation when your foot falls asleep.

4. The string of typographical symbols comic strips use to indicate profanity ("$%@!") is called a grawlix.

5. The small, triangular pink bump on the inside corner of each eye is called the caruncula. It contains sweat and oil glands that produce rheum, also known as "eye crispies," "sleep," and "tear rocks."

6. Another word for playful banter is badinage.

7. What do you call a group of rattlesnakes? A rhumba.

8. To waste time by being lazy is to dringle.

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9. An agraffe is the wire cage that keeps the cork in a bottle of champagne. Tell all your classy friends!

10. Those back flaps on a bra are called wings.

11. A single slice of bacon is called a rasher.

12. The web between your thumb and forefinger is called the purlicue (and is pronounced just like "curlicue"). Acupuncturists say pinching it will make headaches go away.

25 Words That Are Their Own Opposites

Here’s
an ambiguous sentence for you: “Because of the agency’s oversight, the
corporation’s behavior was sanctioned.” Does that mean, 'Because the
agency oversaw the company’s behavior, they imposed a penalty for some
transgression' or does it mean, 'Because the agency was inattentive,
they overlooked the misbehavior and gave it their approval by default'?
We’ve stumbled into the looking-glass world of “contronyms”—words that
are their own antonyms.

1. Sanction (via French, from Latin sanctio(n-), from sancire ‘ratify,’) can mean ‘give official permission or approval for (an action)’ or conversely, ‘impose a penalty on.’
*2. Oversight is the noun form of two verbs with contrary meanings, “oversee” and “overlook.” “Oversee,” from Old English ofersēon ‘look at from above,’ means ‘supervise’ (medieval Latin for the same thing: super- ‘over’ + videre
‘to see.’) “Overlook” usually means the opposite: ‘to fail to see or
observe; to pass over without noticing; to disregard, ignore.’
*3. Left can mean either remaining or departed. If
the gentlemen have withdrawn to the drawing room for after-dinner
cigars, who’s left? (The gentlemen have left and the ladies are left.)
*4. Dust, along with the next two words, is a noun
turned into a verb meaning either to add or to remove the thing in
question. Only the context will tell you which it is. When you dust are
you applying dust or removing it? It depends whether you’re dusting the
crops or the furniture.
*5. Seed can also go either way. If you seed the lawn you add seeds, but if you seed a tomato you remove them.
*6. Stone is another verb to use with caution. You
can stone some peaches, but please don’t stone your neighbor (even if he
says he likes to get stoned).
*7. Trim as a verb predates the noun, but it can
also mean either adding or taking away. Arising from an Old English word
meaning ‘to make firm or strong; to settle, arrange,’ “trim” came to
mean ‘to prepare, make ready.’ Depending on who or what was being
readied, it could mean either of two contradictory things: ‘to decorate
something with ribbons, laces, or the like to give it a finished
appearance’ or ‘to cut off the outgrowths or irregularities of.’ And the
context doesn’t always make it clear. If you’re trimming the tree are
you using tinsel or a chain saw?
*8. Cleave can be cleaved into two “homographs,”
words with different origins that end up spelled the same. “Cleave,”
meaning ‘to cling to or adhere,’ comes from an Old English word that
took the forms cleofian, clifian, or clīfan. “Cleave,” with the contrary
meaning ‘to split or sever (something), ‘ as you might do with a
cleaver, comes from a different Old English word, clēofan. The past
participle has taken various forms: “cloven,” which survives in the
phrase “cloven hoof,” “cleft,” as in a “cleft palate” or “cleaved.”
*9. Resign works as a contronym in writing. This
time we have homographs, but not homophones. “Resign,” meaning ‘to
quit,’ is spelled the same as “resign,” meaning ‘to sign up again,’ but
it’s pronounced differently.
*10. Fast can mean "moving rapidly," as in "running
fast," or ‘fixed, unmoving,’ as in "holding fast." If colors are fast
they will not run. The meaning ‘firm, steadfast’ came first. The adverb
took on the sense ‘strongly, vigorously,’ which evolved into ‘quickly,’ a
meaning that spread to the adjective.
*11. Off means ‘deactivated,’ as in "to turn off," but also ‘activated,’ as in "The alarm went off."
*12. Weather can mean ‘to withstand or come safely
through,’ as in “The company weathered the recession,” or it can mean
‘to be worn away’: “The rock was weathered.”
*13. Screen can mean ‘to show’ (a movie) or ‘to hide’ (an unsightly view).
*14. Help means ‘assist,’ unless you can’t help doing something, when it means ‘prevent.’
*15. Clip can mean "to bind together" or "to
separate." You clip sheets of paper to together or separate part of a
page by clipping something out. Clip is a pair of homographs, words with
different origins spelled the same. Old English clyppan, which
means "to clasp with the arms, embrace, hug," led to our current
meaning, "to hold together with a clasp." The other clip, "to cut or
snip (a part) away," is from Old Norse klippa, which may come from the sound of a shears.
*16. Continue usually means to persist in doing something, but as a legal term it means stop a proceeding temporarily.
*17. Fight with can be interpreted three ways. “He
fought with his mother-in-law” could mean "They argued," "They served
together in the war," or "He used the old battle-ax as a weapon."
(Thanks to linguistics professor Robert Hertz for this idea.)
*18. Flog, meaning "to punish by caning or
whipping," shows up in school slang of the 17th century, but now it can
have the contrary meaning, "to promote persistently," as in “flogging a
new book.” Perhaps that meaning arose from the sense ‘to urge (a horse,
etc.) forward by whipping,’ which grew out of the earliest meaning.
*19. Go means "to proceed," but also "give out or fail," i.e., “This car could really go until it started to go.”
*20. Hold up can mean "to support" or "to hinder": “What a friend! When I’m struggling to get on my feet, he’s always there to hold me up.”
*21. Out can mean "visible" or "invisible." For example, “It’s a good thing the full moon was out when the lights went out.”
*22. Out of means "outside" or "inside": “I hardly get out of the house because I work out of my home.”
*23. Bitch, as reader Shawn Ravenfire pointed out,
can derisively refer to a woman who is considered overly aggressive or
domineering, or it can refer to someone passive or submissive.
*24. Peer is a person of equal status (as in a jury
of one’s peers), but some peers are more equal than others, like the
members of the peerage, the British or Irish nobility.
*25. Toss out could be either "to suggest" or "to discard": “I decided to toss out the idea.”

The contronym (also spelled “contranym”) goes by many names,
including “auto-antonym,” “antagonym,” “enantiodrome,” “self-antonym,”
“antilogy” and “Janus word” (from the Roman god of beginnings and
endings, often depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions).
Can’t get enough of them? The folks at Daily Writing Tips have rounded up even more.

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